The beginning of December was my birthday, i has some spare cash left over and having been a member of this site for a couple of years and on my daily visits ive seen many people post about how good the swapp for 4GB to 8GB was! ... i decided to go buy another 4GB of exactly the same memory i already had, I can honestly say i havent noticed a difference! ... the memory is running fine, the OS see the memory fine, no issues of any kind i was just expecting more performance wise .... I remember when i went form 2GB to 4GB, the difference was awsome ... OS booted faster, programs, games opened/closed alot faster and so on, As said with the extra 4GB added(8GB total)i have not noticed any of this, my system boots the same speed, games/programs run & open/close the same no noticable difference!

Is it just becasue i dont really use my system enough to stress it? i only really play games, google the web and so on ....

Redeemed

12-14-08, 03:30 PM

That would be it.

When it comes to RAM quantity you've ran into what's known as "deminishing returns".

I expected more from my rig, going from 4GB to 8GB... but was let down... no difference at all. As such, my Phenom rig now has 4GB of RAM, the Intel rig has the other 4GB. Think I'm quite content with it this way. ;)

jcrox

12-14-08, 03:32 PM

The amount of system memory in your PC generally only has an effect on your overall speed when your attempting to use more than you have. With modern games, like Crysis, the move to 4GB from 2GB does make a difference. 4gb of memory however is plenty for the average person or even hardcore gamer.

If you want to see faster performance from memory at 4GB or greater you need to buy faster memory not more of it. Even then the difference is likely to be minimal.

If someone is claiming faster performance going from 4GB to 8GB their either likely doing something like video encoding that actually benefits from having a ton of memory... or their system is set up totally FUBAR... or quite possibly they're just full of ****.

Feyy

12-14-08, 04:28 PM

Im still on 2GB memory, but im not upgrading til 2010(whole new pc).

Is there any "big" difference from 2GB to 4GB switch?

Hopefully im 64bit OS by then also :D

jcrox

12-14-08, 04:41 PM

Im still on 2GB memory, but im not upgrading til 2010(whole new pc).

Is there any "big" difference from 2GB to 4GB switch?

Hopefully im 64bit OS by then also :D

I noticed a difference in some games. Crysis for instance, the part in the ship yard right before you get to the tanks especially, ran much smoother for me as well as exiting the game... no more sitting looking at a black screen for a few seconds and then watching my desktop slowly appear, it's instantaneous now.

This by the way is really only an issue with Vista for me. With XP pretty much everything runs just as well with 2GB for me as it does in Vista with 4GB.

ATOJAR

12-14-08, 04:57 PM

I noticed a massive defference going from 2GB to 4GB, boot time, games, programs loaded alot faster and my system just felt alot snappier overall .... shame i cant say the same about going from 4GB to 8GB. :(

jolle

12-14-08, 05:05 PM

Ran out of RAM with 8GB and 8Gb swap file, rendering a really dense model from Mudbox with some crazy settings in Maya yesterday hehe.
Using a lower level mesh and a generated normal map fixed that.

But those are the type of stuff where you really get your moneys worth.
64bit applications, that eat up alot of RAM, like working with high density meshes in zbrush or mudbox.
doing comps in fusion for example, will allow you to cache more of the timeline with more RAM.

ViN86

12-14-08, 05:21 PM

unless youre doing some serious rendering or working with very large files (1GB+), you shouldnt notice a difference. for me, Vista-x64 uses about 1.5-2GB at the desktop (with caching/superfetch enabled) and it doesnt go beyond that. if an app needs more memory, Vista dumps the cache.

Mr Bigman

12-14-08, 07:27 PM

You really have to look at what your doing, what you have running in background and how much you do at the same time like encoding to gaming or just plain old browsing.

I have 12 gigs of ram in one rig and 8 in another and the rest of em have 4 and 2 gigs of ram and to be honest with 8 gigs of ram, yea overall system performance will be more likely better but you won't really see a night and day speed increase at all so enjoy the fact that ram is cheap but you can only do so much with it.

Do VM's or ram drives like i do to take advantage of all that ram.

crainger

12-14-08, 07:32 PM

No one uses RAM drives anymore Bigman. Not since DOS.

Mr Bigman

12-14-08, 08:47 PM

i don't use them either no more but stated that as an option for those who want to load quake 3 into one or use it for certain things.

crainger

12-14-08, 09:02 PM

I think you're trying to pull a fast one on me. I think you use a RAM drive to store your body building porn. ::bleh::

bob saget

12-14-08, 10:11 PM

Im still on 2GB memory, but im not upgrading til 2010(whole new pc).

Is there any "big" difference from 2GB to 4GB switch?

Hopefully im 64bit OS by then also :D

yep, like 2 different computers.

Mr Bigman

12-14-08, 10:41 PM

I think you're trying to pull a fast one on me. I think you use a RAM drive to store your body building porn. ::bleh::

Ok, you got me thier sahw.

XDanger

12-15-08, 03:19 PM

What about something like HL2 or Crysis with silly amounts of detail modifications in 6144x1536 or something,

Does more than 4gb help then?

Will 8gb future proof at all in games?

Q

12-15-08, 03:28 PM

The only reason that I have 8GB is that I run multiple virtual machines concurrently. If your not doing something like that or heavy video/image/audio editing there is little chance that you'd notice the difference.

john19055

12-15-08, 10:10 PM

It never hurts to have more ram ,even tho it might not help now maybe in the future or in some other application you may use.I was actually running crysis the other day and my machine shutdown and rebooted and said I ran out of memory ,I found that weird since I have 4gigs installed.

Mr Bigman

12-15-08, 11:30 PM

Ive done VM's but serious what the hell do people run virtual machines anyway for?

Its not their wanting to run windows 98.

I see alot of hype on virtual machines these days but this is another topic.

People like holding onto the past maybe.

XDanger

12-16-08, 03:48 PM

Ive done VM's but serious what the hell do people run virtual machines anyway for?

Its not their wanting to run windows 98.

I see alot of hype on virtual machines these days but this is another topic.

People like holding onto the past maybe.

Looks at sig :o

I cant be bothered to connect a monitor to my Win98 machine ,The only way I could play Sports Car GT was to run a virtual ubuntu and use wine... Windows compatability mode should hang its head in shame.

Mr Bigman

12-16-08, 04:46 PM

People who are still living in a 98 shell need to come out for air. Its old very old now.

Find a newer game with simular freatures and enjoy it.

And besides win98 doesn't detect a display driver over 16 colors anyway in VMware so how is it possible?

XDanger

12-16-08, 05:07 PM

virtualbox/ubuntu/wine/old game testing purposes only

Mr Bigman

12-16-08, 05:40 PM

ah cool, that works shaw.

jcrox

12-16-08, 05:50 PM

What about something like HL2 or Crysis with silly amounts of detail modifications in 6144x1536 or something,

Does more than 4gb help then?

Will 8gb future proof at all in games?

You'll run out of memory room on your video card(s) long before you have to worry about system ram.

XDanger

12-16-08, 07:39 PM

I was actually running crysis the other day and my machine shutdown and rebooted and said I ran out of memory ,I found that weird since I have 4gigs installed.

I never had a re-boot but vista has closed HL2 and Crysis claiming not enough ram /4gb